What's in a name?

I love talking about journalism, in particular the way my job is changing.

Take my word for, the changes have been seismic.

I always joke with people when I do public speaking engagements that I did not stop at a local watering hole before showing up to regale them with tales from the print world.

But I do appear to be somewhat off balance.

It is not an accident.

I spend most of my waking moments these days pulled in two different directions - producing a print edition as we have always done, and the lightning fast online world where we deliver information in real time, 24 hours a day.

I have one leg still firmly planted in the print world, and the other in the online world.

Those two worlds have some distinct differences, one of which has been the focus of considerable online debate over the past week.

I post on Twitter pretty much all day. It's one of the primary vehicles we now use to deliver breaking news and updates.

I post under the 'handle' @philheron. I find it the easiest way to make sure people know where this information is coming from.

I suppose I could have made up another handle, let's say @PrimosPhil.

If you didn't know that was me, do you think it would hold the same authority.

Twitter is full of these kinds of handles.

That's the point. They are pseudonyms. There's a very good chance you in fact do not know who is posting that information. These two worlds collided recently when I received a letter to the editor submission from a person who wanted to be known only by his Twitter handle.

In this instance, that handle is very well known. It is @FanSince09, the online sleuth who was crucial to identifying a group of people believed connected to an attack on a gay couple in Philadelphia. Several people now face charges in that case.

@FanSince09 wanted to respond to an opinion piece that was penned by Sunday columnist Christine Flowers. In it she had some pointed things to say about the push for hate-crime legislation that this case has sparked, as well as the online work that pushed the investigation into the headlines.

Our policy on letters to the editor is pretty clear. We require a name, town, and phone number for verification. The phone number is not printed. The name and town are.

I still think it's a good policy. That does not mean we do not use anonymous material elsewhere in the paper. We feature an entire column called Sound Off, that is anonymous. But they are not letter to the editor.

I would be happy to include a person's Twitter handle, and run it along with their name. But I remain unwilling to open our op-ed pages to anonymous pieces. I believe it is a recipe for disaster.

I eventually explained my decision and ran his letter in my blog.

But the debate over our policy requiring a name to have a letter published continues.

So what do the readers think?

Please feel free to weigh in with your stance. As usual, I'm willing to listen to dissenting opinions. I'm just not always willing to print them, unless you are willing to put your name beside it.